Threshold to Innocuousness
by xXxJazzy B. RealxXx
Summary: I'm NOT an animal! I-I'm HUMAN!" - or so he wished. To break free from discrimination was too scary a road to take, so he sat curled up in the corner of his cage, malnourished and on display. But an unlikely little girl became his door to innocence
1. Carnival of Souls

**_Threshold to Innocuousness_**

**Disclaimer: **_My lawyer says kidnapping Inuyasha with a sack just isn't possible (sigh). _

_Cheap title, an AU story inspired off the film of "The Elephant Man" but definitely not a parody._

_I just finished watching it and I haven't felt such joy and sorrow from one movie in some time. It reminds me of how terrible people in this world are to one another, how simple-minded and cynical they act._

_Mind you, the usual Inuyasha love triangles still await in this story._

_Most of the story takes place when they're children all the way up to adolescent hood. In addition, everyone mentioned is human except for Inuyasha. _

0oo0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

**_Chapter: Carnival of Souls_**

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Harried and noisy rustling intervened with the drumming of stark rain.

_'I can't find her…'_

A small, beige hand of white claws strayed across the moist patch of hay in trembling search for something lost and dear.

_'I just had her…!'_

Whimpers sobbed to no present being in particular.

_'I can't find her!!'_

A few shining locks of white spilled over a flailing bony arm.

_'Mother,'_ watered eyes of amber silently wailed. '_Mother!'_

"Hey, you!"

And a face half-hidden behind clumps of mud turned wildly to the source of the rude call for attention.

"Why don't you bark, mutt-face?" the spoiled little boy beat a stick against the rusty old bars, rattling them.

When the white-haired boy didn't reply on the other side of those black bars, the grunting boy hammered his stick against the bars thunderously.

"Bark, dog-turd! Bark! I said BARK! You a mutt or ain't you?!"

"Kouga Ookami!" a middle-aged woman scurried to the boy's side to deflect his tantrum elsewhere. "Leave the boy alone before he attacks you – come now, let us go see the midgets perform for the carnival."

"Oh yeah, sorry mutt-face! Gotta go see the other freaks, too!" The arrogant boy flicked his tongue out at the caged prisoner before trotting off with his mother in a fit of mocking laughter.

The child of a glinting white mane sniffled up the nauseating scent of rainwater, _'I-I'm not a dog! I'm human! J-Just like mama...' _

_"Inuyasha…" _– he heard it!

_'Mother!' _his mind yipped, his lips open, voice mute.

_"Inuyasha…"_

_'Why'd you run away from me? You said you'd always be with me!' _A twosome of feral dog ears fanned at the roof of his white scalp as he flung hay straws off the sodden floor of his cage. _'Did you ch-change your m-mind, Mommy? Did you change your mind?! Did you finally realize what I look like?'_

He howled when desperation guzzled him and tears bounced off the fouled cheeks of his little heart-shaped face. A traumatizing image of his very mother shrieking for rescue from a blood-drunk and rabid mongrel lanced an artery of his heart's early childhood memory. He recalled his soft babyish cries in the background.

The salty tears of acrid seeped into the crooks of his bawling mouth at the heart-wrenching memory, _'I am NOT a fucking d-dog! I hate dogs! I hate them!' _

_"Inuyasha..."_

The young dog-eared boy gasped; his hands had smoothened over something flimsy and soggy.

_'Mama…' _his lips shivered, a finalized tear flinging off the crest of his chin.

He pricked off a few straws of sticking hay from the damp photograph of a rosy-cheeked woman.

_'Mother,'_ the naïve boy hugged the dripping picture to his beating heart._ 'You look cold.'_

The white-haired boy flattened his ears against the slope of his head, rocking back and forth, back and forth with the picture taut to his embrace. His ear suddenly flagged to the commotion tackling his back.

"'Cuse me…"

It was tiny, sweet…

Innocuous.

"'Cuse me," the little voice urged a bit louder.

The caged boy glared grudgingly into the abused wall in front of him, _'Go away.'_

He despised innocency.

"Um, 'cuse me but…"

The boy growled into his chest, tightening himself around the photo of his mother while he sat there, hunched and agitated, _'Go away!' _

"'Cuse me but why are you all wet?"

The boy's body jumped, making his thick hair that intermingled with the wet hay twitch, _'Please, go away.'_

"You look cold," the voice fumed.

_'Why won't she go away?'_ The dog-eared boy chanced a peek over his naked shoulder. The harsh features of his grimy face lightened in the presence of a rosy-cheeked girl twirling a tendril of raven-black hair in between her stubby fingers.

Rosy-cheeks…

He compared those cheeks to the picture tucked into his breast.

"Hm," the little girl's lips coiled into a tight line of forethought. "You have a name? Why are you in a cage? Why's your hair so white? You don't look like a freak to me. You have cute dog ears! Can I touch them? Can I? Can I? Can I?"

'_Bitch, go AWAY!' _The boy creased his furry appendages back against his scalp, hoping their white would disappear into the white of his mane's matted mass.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Keh," was all he muttered before looking back into the opposite direction. _'Go away, bitch.' _

"Hey, you!" she fussed.

Sensing a threat as she jerked an arm through the bars, the boy hurled his body around and roared at her, exposing saber fangs capable of shredding life into gruesome pieces. His elongated talons slashed out at her,_ 'Go **AWAY**!' _

Alas, his slit pupils collapsed even further into the abyss of yawning amber…

There she stood, the sapphire blue from her eyes dripping out, with the torn shreds of flesh in her arm caressed into her chest. Her cheeks swelled with redness while tears brooked down her sun-kissed complexion.

The caged boy's wooly black eyebrows crept back on the furrow of his forehead, watching the blur of her fleeting body disappear behind the film of rain.

However, her scent remained strong and boasting.

Nose twiddling, he rushed his eyes down to the red blanket that dangled loosely between the bars of his cage.

Hesitantly, he held his mother's photo to one bosom and let his fingers feel over the wool of the blanket. He slicked pasted bangs off his clammy face by a red-stained finger, smudging blood across his eyelid and lapping up the rest with a tongue.

_'…Kagome…'_ His mind read the name stitched into the wool of the blanket.

_"You look cold."_

The boy whined whilst his eyes tendered into guilty consideration.

_"You have a name?"_

"In…" his wilted lips functioned improperly. "I-Inu…" he fisted the blanket in his crimson-tainted palms. "Ya…sh-sh-sha…" he lugged in an austere inhale of venomous oxygen, wrinkles of strain lined under his widened eyes.

The dog-boy let his sad-eyed gaze fall upon the streaks of white downpour while people laughed and danced in the carnival of 'freaks'. "Inu...ya...sha."

However, she hadn't returned to him.

"Inu...yasha," he begged for her forgiveness, to prove he was no dog, no animal, no monster. _'I'm sorry.' _

A blur of giggling children zigged past his cage.

"Inu-YASHA!" he announced louder._ 'I'm sorry!' _

_**-Pitter-Pat-**_

_**-Patter-Pitter-**_

_**-Pitter-Patter-**_

No rosy-cheeked little girl. Just rain answered.

His weary eyelids drooped in between the veiling of feathery white bangs that glued down to his wet face, his throat unleashing a hoarse whine.

_'I'm sorry...' _

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Obviously, Inuyasha can't talk very well.

He was taught to be mute for so long, he's afraid and insecure about letting his lips function.

Their ages in this chapter?

**Kagome - Six**

**Kouga - Eight**

**Inuyasha - Eight**

A short chapter not giving all that much away - I'll continue once I get them reviews.


	2. Kindness is Lethal Material

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o_

_**Chapter:** **Kindness is Lethal Material**_

_**Disclaimer:** Thank you kindly for your reviews!_

_This story has a lot of hits and alerts, but it would be nice too if you readers could bring the life to this story by reviewing as much as you read it. I'm not afraid to discontinue. If you think it's good and deserves to be continued, then tell me so, don't be like Inuyasha and hide your feelings, hehe._

_I wasn't too happy while writing this chapter, no inspiration in the air, but I tried._

_I've decided to complicate some love triangles, however. Love squares maybe?_

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o_

The eerie gala music of the carnival dallied on everyone's stampeding heels. Fake fire torches illumined the dark night, which had been pervaded with children's laughter and men's hoots at the performing 'freaks' on display.

"Dearest?"

"Hn?"

"Please stop fidgeting."

"Sorry."

She couldn't cure her fidgets – she couldn't help them. She didn't want to come back to this place, not again.

"Mama?" her trembling fingers curled around her mother's sleeve, jerking.

"What's wrong, dear?" The mid-aged woman of reserved youth kept her autumn eyes ahead of her.

"When can we go back home?" the ten year old girl pouted, wavy planes of raven-black hair bouncing with her every frustrated hop; her legs were tired.

Her mother ignored the oncoming tantrum and tucked a lost curl from her eye back into the dale of her short brown hair.

Her daughter chewed her lip and slid a remembering hand down the mended soft tissues of her scrawny arm.

A flash of glittering white streaks of hair flared across her mind. The quintessential star of her fears.

She mewed inwardly within her throat. The four distant lines were still visible in her left arm from all those years back, from when she was six years of age.

"Couldja stop bein' such a freak?"

The ten year old girl's eyes popped up from her healed arm and now to her younger brother.

Her small brother grimaced irritably at her, "You've been jumpy ever since we came here last time! How could some stupid cat-scratch make you go all coo-coo in the head?"

"Mind your own beeswax, Sota!"

"Good heavens, children! Don't dawdle!" Their mother persisted as she slunk away into the crowds, gesturing for them to follow.

"Comin'!" Sota trailed after his mother but didn't forget to insult his sister with a wagging tongue.

"I'll make you pay, you jerk!" the elder sister stomped after her obnoxious brother.

When the bickering mellowed down, Kagome finally confronted her mother with the question that had been nagging her all along, "Why are we here, Mama?"

Mrs. Higuarshi winched her head into Kagome's direction, just by the slightest inch, "Did you forget already, Kagome? It's Sota's birthday; he's never been to this carnival before."

"I wanna see the dog boy!" Sota cheered.

Kagome frowned, "You could've just left me behind."

"Nonsense, it's a FAMILY trip," Mrs. Higuarshi insisted kindly, grabbing both her children's tiny wrists and leading through the sty of people.

The carnival's earsplitting trumpets were haunting Kagome's ears. She hugged her mother's wrist as they swept into the maze and followed the signs.

_'I can't believe she actually believed me when I told her a black cat scratched my arm,' _Kagome growled aloud, then softened up her face._ 'But I didn't want to tell on him. I just…I just couldn't. It didn't feel right.' _

Sota cocked a baffled eyebrow when his older sister caressed her arm into the mosquito bites of her bosom _(A/N: hehe, meaning little boobs). _

"Freak," Sota decided.

"Totally heard you," Kagome warned.

"Oh I'm real scared—OOF!" Sota slammed nose-first into his mother's buttock. "Ow, mom! What chu stop like that fooor? Geez!"

"Oh my," Mrs. Higuarshi summed up all her breath into that one sentence.

"What is it?" Kagome tipped her head back all the way to look up at her mother. "Something happen?"

"It says here," their mother traced her finger along the letters of a sign. "that displays for the dog-boy has been closed."

Sota blinked. When it sunk in he balled his fist together and whined out, "Awww, no! You can't be serious! Mooom!"

"There goes YOUR birthday," Kagome smiled thankfully.

Her thankfulness was shot down by her mother's curiosity – "Let's have a look around."

"What?!" Kagome's jaw dropped. "B-But, but! Mooom!"

"Cool!" Sota bounced up and down.

"Just one look," Mrs. Higuarshi ruffled Sota's hair follicle. "it is my baby boy's birthday after all."

"Heeeh," Sota gave his sister a cheesy, 'I-win' grin.

Kagome could only huff a strand of black out of her face and cross her arms. Her final ounce of luck was pummeled when a wheedled voice speared out at them –

"Hey!"

The Higuarshi turned casually around to the noisemaker. The sight left Kagome disappointed.

_'Just a eleven year old boy?' _she fingered at her voile dress.

"Wh…What're you standin' 'round here for? You can read, can't you?" The freckled boy heaved out his lean chest, a messy batch of burgundy bangs hiding the insecurity in his almond eyes.

"Well hello there, young man," Mrs. Higuarshi greeted, ignoring his threatening manner. "Are you the dog-boy's caretaker?"

"The boss is the freak's caretaker," the boy straightened up some, glimpsing at Kagome and Sota. "What do you folks want? We're closed for the night. Our hours are one to six."

"It's only six-ten!" six-year old Sota complained at the much taller boy.

"What's your name, young man?" Mrs. Higuarshi prepared for a handshake.

The boy eyed her funnily before responding without taking the friendly gesture, "Kohaku."

"Now that's a nice name. Who's your boss, Kohaku?"

A hefty boot trampled down on blossoming flowers, exploding a rat into spurts of snarled intestines and spraying blood.

"Please, call me Naraku, Madam."

All four conversers stared wide-eyed at the man heaving the dangling curtain out of his way from within the carriage. The stranger dug his heel into the rat's cranium before trudging forward.

Sota gapped at the fair waves of brunette hair that fanned out at his heels. Kagome flushed at the unbalanced smile that accented the sensational shimmer to his ruby eyes.

"Naraku?" Mrs. Higuarshi practiced it on her tongue before clasping her hands together, "What a nice name!"

"Show's closed," he clarified frankly, the suaveness never abandoning his polished voice. "Sorry."

The boss eyeballed Kagome from toe to head, the smile seamed to his lips somehow stretching even longer across his handsome skin texture. He made a sort of snort/sigh and reeled his back on them, brunette heap of curly mass following the motion and whispering through the small whirlwinds of the breeze while he walked. Kohaku tagged along.

"Just a moment, Mr. Naraku," Mrs. Higuarshi curved her hand beside her mouth to echo her voice.

"Yes, Madam?" He merely ceased his steps, but nothing more.

Kagome began wondering if he had expected his mother to stop him.

"We'd like to have just one small peek at it!" Mrs. Higuarshi mastered all her cheerfulness.

They all could hear the laughter waltzing on the pink of Naraku's tongue, "I don't think so."

"With all do respect, sir, but we're confident enough."

"Not," Kagome added, though quietly.

Yet it looked like Naraku had overheard her, because he skimmed an amused eye over to her from behind a thick forelock of brown hair.

"Oh are you?" He was chuckling, Kagome could feel it.

"It's my son's birthday, you see," Mrs. Higuarshi went on, but Naraku spun around just enough to speak to them directly.

"Girl," Naraku's chin touched the adam's apple of his throat to look down on little Kagome. "Let me see your hand."

"Excuse me?" Kagome blushed.

"Lend me your hand," he repeated softer, eyes slant and slit, somehow in an oddly charming approach.

"Come on, Kagome! Quit stutterin' and let 'im see your stupid hand!" Sota had the urge to push her.

Kagome stuck her tongue out at her young brother to stall time for walking out to Naraku's request. She flinched when he kneeled on one knee.

She dreamt of a chain of words like_, "Marry me, Kagome" _slithering out of his flawless lips.

A feathery sensation of flustered blood grazed along her cheeks before she released her hand from her pumping heart and stretched it out to Naraku.

For a first time, she stopped breathing. The moment he gently squeezed his fingers around hers, she stopped breathing.

And for a second time, she stopped breathing. The moment he suddenly jerked her closer, she stopped breathing.

"Well now," Naraku smirked, thumbing over the scars across her milky arm. "How'd a cute little girl like you get such a nasty scratch?"

"Um," Kagome bowed her head, eyebrows hidden behind her shrouding bangs. "I-I-I-I…uh…c-cat?"

Naraku's eyebrows arched in utter amusement and Kagome felt stupider than ever. He released her and stood up, leaving her to marvel over his touch to her flesh. She'd adore this arm forever.

"Step inside," he suggested to the family.

Everyone, including Kohaku, gasped in confusion.

"Just like that? Really? Al-RIGHT! Thanks, mister!" Sota pushed past Kohaku to enter into the dark door entrance Naraku presented for him.

"Birthday boy, right?" Naraku nodded at Mrs. Higuarshi, who followed her son willingly. He then flashed an unreadable message to Kagome.

Her eyebrows knitted downwards to meet the scrunch in her nose. She couldn't read it.

"You especially, little Kagome." He gently nudged her into the room, indifferent to her surprised yelp of bashfulness.

But Kagome didn't linger on the action like before; her eyes were set high on the streams of light that cascaded through the ceiling's holes from the outside moonlight and the splotches they shed on the hayed floor. Seeing as the carriage had no light, it was helpful.

"Watch your steps," Naraku stood behind Kagome when they guided themselves into the large carriage and awed at the strange creatures jarred away in the corners for decoration.

Kohaku brushed past Kagome rudely and headed straight for a curtain that blocked their paths. He clasped his fingers around a rope one by one, hesitant.

"Ready yourselves, this isn't going to be a handsome sight," Naraku's eyes focused on Kagome intently once he was standing in front of the drapes. "It might be more of a monstrous one to you all, some more so than others."

"Can we get on with it, already? I wanna see the dog-kid." Sota sighed, getting elbowed by his sister. "Whaaat?"

"His name is Inuyasha, the demon half-dog we call him, age twelve. His maternal mother was attacked by a demon dog herself when he was four months old."

"That's stupid! Demons don't exist!" Sota interrupted. He could've sworn Naraku sent a soul-gripping glare his way.

"It's a figure of speech," Naraku cleared his throat. "We call him a half-demon because of his monstrous appearance."

"Riiight," Sota harassed, earning a swift kick in the shin from Kagome this time. "Gueh! W-Wouldja STOP doin' that?!"

Naraku glanced at his worker boy. "May I present to you, the half-demon."

Kohaku hauled up the curtains by the rope, the Higuarshi family's pupils growing bigger and bigger with the more that seeped into view.

There it was –

The terrible, demon half-dog –

Curled into a fetus position on the floor of his impounding cage. Sota could just make out the moonlight shavings and flakes that streaked along a mass of something white and knotted.

"…Where is it? Is it under all that white stuff?" Sota complained.

Naraku answered to it by striking the cage with his cane, "Oi, wake up, mongrel."

"The boss said to wake up, ya' mangy mutt!" Kohaku beat his foot into the cage's side.

Disarrayed and startled, a twosome of white ears touched the thin rivulet of moonlight in a single twitch.

Mrs. Higuarshi peeped out her signature, "Oh my."

"Ears!" Sota hoped that was what he saw.

Kagome mirrored her mother's expression. He looked even worse than he did last time.

As his face met the splinters of moonlight to face Naraku under the muddle of white bangs that dipped into scared, honey eyes, Kagome's heart began to trumpet nice and loud. His cheeks were marred with swelled scars and lesions from past abuse, his snowy hair was matted in filth and his bones were trying to eat their way out of his very skin.

All her earlier fears were replaced with a pulse of pity.

"Woah…" Sota breathed.

"Oi, get up," Naraku rammed the cage bars again.

Glaring, the dog-eared boy eased out of a red blanket and sat on his knuckles like a perfectly taught dog. His head stayed turned down and hung to purposely hide his face beneath a bulky curtain of snow-white hair.

"Little girl," Naraku grinned shrewdly. "Step up to the cage, for me."

Mrs. Higuarshi immediately felt her motherly instincts kick in, "Hold on now—"

"Don't worry, the abomination won't harm her, I give you my word," Naraku ran a slow-traveling hand into his scalp as his eyes narrowed, a movement made to seduce. "Come now, don't be shy."

Kagome didn't even so much pay a stare to Naraku's offering hand; her memory was lugging her across the room and toward the corral of a cage.

_'That blanket,' _Kagome gulped. '_It's here. __He took it from me!' '_

Naraku seemed unfazed by her sudden forwardness, but simply watched through a striking red eye.

Inuyasha didn't budge. His petite eyelashes kept to his smudged cheeks as he imagined everyone had disappeared from the room. Secretly, he cribbed his mother's photograph to him.

But then a familiar scent wrapped him – was it mother's? No, his mother never smelt of vanilla.

The dog-eared boy snapped his head up, a glaze of disbelief sheeting over his wide eyes. He sat there, petrified by the sight in front of him.

"…My…" Kagome struggled with her speech as her eyes stayed trained on the red blanket at his feet. "Th-That's...my...that's mine!" she finally found herself gawking up at the boy. "Inu…Inuyasha."

The fog of fear cleared from his eyes and left a light of shock_. 'She heard me.'_

"That's mine, you thief!" Kagome hissed, grabbing the bars of the cage ruthlessly. "Give it back!" she wrapped her small fingers around the blanket at the foot of the cage.

Inuyasha jumped to the bars of the cage with a bark like a hyperactive monkey, causing Kagome to stumble back in a screech. She was caught by the wrist before she could kiss the ground by none other than Naraku.

"I knew it was you," Naraku's eyes switched from her scarred arm to her traumatized face, applying a string of pressure to her wrist.

A sharp howl ditched Kagome's throat when the agony surged straight to her childhood-bruise, "That hurts!"

Naraku's face grew dark and shadowy. He released her wrist with a fury, "Only a HALF demon can cause such a wound to remain painful after all these years."

Kagome whimpered, grateful for the fact that Mrs. Higuarshi and Sota hadn't heard the small dispute between the two, for they were rushing over.

"Kagome, are you alright?" Her mother roamed frantic fingers over her cheeks and arms. "Did that dog-boy hurt you?"

"Oh no Madam, he was just happy to see her," Naraku chuckled like a snake allurer.

Kagome rubbed her brittle wrist as she frowned at Naraku, mentally cross. _'What a creep! Here I thought he was a nice man.' _

"He isn't growling or nothin'," Sota pointed to the dog-eared boy's frowning face squeezed between the bars. He, in fact, was growling.

His sister's cerulean irises reached Inuyasha's, locking for what seemed like a good trice of eternity. Kagome rubbed her suddenly sore arm,_ 'He tried to attack me!' _

_'She tried to attack me!' _Inuyasha's eyes trembled in his sockets.

"He doesn't look harmful, I guess." Mrs. Higuarshi blocked Inuyasha's view of Kagome, jabbing her face in his. "Look at those dog ears. Are they real?"

"Aw, he looks so cool!" Sota popped up beside her.

Inuyasha retreated away from the bars, rage still propping his amber orbs, but his growls at a minimum.

As the family continued to hang over the cage, Naraku snarled down on Kagome at his side. "What's in that head of yours? Did you expect the monster to give you a handshake when you put your arm through his cage? Did you?"

"It wasn't like that!" Kagome protected her arm into her white dress. "I just…the b-blanket."

"He won't let it go."

"…What?"

"He won't let it go," Naraku churned through grating teeth.

Kagome cringed up at the boiling man. "I-Is…that b-bad?"

"Wench," Naraku blamed. "you've shown him a shed of kindness! You gave him an act of acceptance, of affection, friendship! You gave him HOPE."

"…H-Hey, that's not bad at all—"

"Shut up," the maroon-eyed male turned his head away in a blur of speed. "you've killed his soul. Two years after your arrival, he's clung to the hope of finding another like you that could treat him fairly in the audience that came for his show display. Give him a glimpse of what kindness looks like again."

Finally, Kagome understood his upset attitude.

"After two years died, so did his hope. He's more of a misery than he was before he was brought to me. He won't eat, he won't sleep. The sulking bastard," Naraku uttered under his breath before sneering at Kagome again. "Do you understand now? You've made it impossible to take CARE of him. But a freak like him has nowhere else to turn to, now does he?"

Kagome pried open her mouth to speak—

"Of course not!" Naraku balled his fist. "I gave an oath to his whore of a mother—"

"How dare you!" Kagome spat at him, lifting her own fists.

"I beg your pardon?" Naraku's mood changed to calmness at her burst of rebellion.

"You-have-no-right!" Kagome stomped her foot down with each grounded out word. "To call ANYONE'S mother that nasty old name, ya' big meanie!"

"Kagome, dear."

Kagome shrieked before grinning politely to her oblivious mother, "Y-Yes, mama?"

"Spread out some sheets on the floor in the bedroom tonight, it's been decided!"

"What's been…decided?"

"I'm gonna use him for my show-and-tell project on Monday at school!" Sota beamed.

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

_Strange twist, no? It'll sound better in the next chapter. _

_Apparently Kagome forgot she handed him that blanket, too. Poor Inuyasha. _

_Till next time! _


	3. The Unwise Contract to Jovial

_**Chapter: The Unwise Contract to Jovial **_

_**Disclaimer:** Oh gosh, I wrote this in less than an hour! I don't know if I should be happy about this chapter or not. Mm, you be the judge of that. Next chapter will be a bit warmer. Despite the sadness, this story will be cute...then it might collapse back into sadness, hehe. _

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

"I-I don't understand!"

Nor did she want to. All she really prayed for was some type of time machine to drop down from the heavens to reverse all this.

"Oh geez, what's not to understand?" Sota pursed his lips at Kagome in an irritated pucker. "Do we gotta spell it out for you?"

Seconds way from pouncing on her brother, she was blocked by a shadow shedding in front of her tiny frame.

"Unfortunately you'll have to spell it out for me," Naraku ignored the riled glare being bombed into his back from the little ten year old behind him.

Mrs. Higuarshi stepped forward with her brand smile of genuine, "Please Mr. Naraku—"

"Just Naraku," he grinded his teeth.

A patient sigh flurried out from between the mother's smiling lips, "Naraku, with your permission of course, I would like to—"

"No."

"Just for a—"

"No."

"Aw c'mon, mister! It's my birthday!" Sota staged on a stomping tantrum, prodding a finger at the dog-boy's cage. "And you haven't even heard what she was gonna say!"

Kagome would've been relishing in this moment that played into her favor, but instead she found her eyes tilted into Inuyasha's direction. Her head weighed more into the left to look around Naraku's lanky leg and focus more on the boy with hair of a sterlet's silver back.

He was staring at her. Or was he glaring? She couldn't tell from this distance. She could only recognize the scorn proof of his distrust carved into the bronze of his face. The ferociousness that lined his brow darkened.

Her arm began to hurt. Kagome's body shook and she half-intentionally hid behind Naraku's leg, nursing her childhood wound.

Mrs. Higuarshi chuckled into the back of a shy fist, "How much?"

Naraku's eyes hardened at her merry, "Pardon?"

"How much for the dog-kid?" Sota rationalized as he clutched onto his mother's pants leg.

The peering flecks of moonlight teased on Naraku's widening lips.

"I'm sorry," his lips parted to expose a set of pearly whites. "but I don't sell my freaks. He's my profit, after all."

"Oh heaven's no!" Mrs. Higuarshi flagged her hand about laughingly. "We don't want to keep him—"

"I just want him for my project!" Sota grinned around to Inuyasha, who blinked. "He's just so cool, I'd ace it!"

Kagome saw her spot to jump in, "Just because you're failing doesn't mean you can use him to find an easy way out, dummy!"

Their mother dimissed the argument erupting between the green children and only beamed at Naraku, "We'll keep him until Monday and have him back before you know it. I'm willing to pay as much as it takes."

Kagome sprung out of her bickering with little Sota and raced scared glances between Mrs. Higuarshi's chuffed smile and Naraku's contemplating grin.

_'Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh NO!' _Kagome's body language screamed.

Inuyasha skeletal fingers enveloped around the bars of his cage with his ears upright and erect, the left appendage twitching once to a measly sound in the background.

_'Buy me?' _He scampered back when Sota's chubby visage popped up in front of his.

"We're gonna have tons of fun, Inu…yasha, right? Yeah, TONS of fun!"

Kagome was so distracted by Sota's back that she only got the last crumbs of her mother's conversation:

"I'll have him shipped to you on Monday morning—"

"Oh, I'm afraid that just won't do," Mrs. Higuarshi's perked lips never loosened from their tight stretch. "What if something were to happen, and you don't get there in time? We'll just take him with us tonight and have him returned by Monday night."

Kagome covered her mouth to flood her palms with a shriek._ 'Kami HATES me!'_

Naraku sucked on his cheek before smacking his lips, "That's too much time between him and your family."

"He won't be of any trouble, I'm sure."

"Why Madam, that's clearly not what I meant. Inuyasha is a paranoid mutt, but I'd advise you to take precaution and not demonstrate to him the meaning of what it is to have a heart."

"Then we'll be terribly cruel. How about that?" Mrs. Higurashi joked while nudging Sota away from the bars of the dog-boy's cage.

Clueless to her teasing, Naraku nodded quite seriously, "Good.—Kohaku!"

Kohaku unbolted the padlock shackled around the crate and wrenched the cage door open. The boy adjusted his cap and reached into the coop to place a chain around Inuyasha's neck.

Sota's eyes became glittery at seeing the white-haired boy step out of the darkness and into a vast space of pale blue spotlight from the moon's shine.

Kagome's innards squeezed around each other sickeningly and she had to calm the clamoring thoughts in her head.

The moonlight truly defined every detail of his naked form, leaving every scar of extravagant red visible and exposed.

Kohaku stood obediently beside the back-rounded Inuyasha.

Kagome looked like the only one who could see the small sputters of emotions and humiliation behind those thawed amber eyes. Within the little time she had, she studied the abuse and trauma engraved into his tattered body.

The jagged tear of flesh across his protruding ribcage was obviously the work of a whip. Kagome pegged Naraku a quick glare. Raw scabs and gashes trailed from his collarbone and disappeared into the mesh of wooly white between his thighs.

When she dared her eyes to continue, she had to restrain herself from a disdainful gasp.

Zigzagging along the veins of the dangling member of his manhood was a host of crisscross slits and hacks crusted to the foreskin. The myriad of his skin's swollen and frayed lacerates winded around his knocking knees all the way to his bony ankles. His nude, malnourished body shivered.

A tear leaked from the blue in Kagome's eye.

It was clear; this mutant boy's life was completely in thralldom by Naraku.

"U-Uh," Mrs. Higuarshi covered Kagome and Sota's eyes when she realized they too had been staring in horrify. "Naraku, sir?"

"Yes?" Naraku snapped his fingers at Kohaku.

Understanding, Kohaku wrested the red blanket away from Inuyasha's larger hand and flung it over his shoulders to cover his body.

"How is it that he got all those bruises?" Mrs. Higuarshi hugged the back of her children's heads into her muumuu dress. "What activity does he take part in when performing?"

"Nothing over the top, Madam," Naraku spun his keychain on his finger. "He was brought to me this way – beaten and scythed."

Kagome snatched her mother's hand off her eyes and accused Naraku with a tetchy, "LIAR, LIAR! PANTS ON FIRE!"

Inuyasha's white dog ears shot up straight.

"Kagome," Mrs. Higuarshi muffled her daughter's belligerent mouth.

"Brazen child, is she not?" Naraku winked at the rebellious ten year old.

"Sota, I think we're dealing with something a little too detailed for your young ages," Mrs. Higuarshi let her hands hesitantly fall to her hips.

"No way, Mom!" Sota laughed excitedly. "You said I could have anything I wanted for my birthday! Dog-boy will help my grade!"

Mrs. Higuarshi's worried face angled down to Kagome's mop of blue-streaked curls. It was no mystery to her how barely harnessed her daughter's overruling emotions were. Whether Kagome knew it or not, her mother could clearly see the unconscious need and want to soothe the dog-boy's troubles.

…Mrs. Higuarshi allowed an understanding smile to break loose.

Her daughter was an emotionalist.

Kagome blinked as her mother's soft hand caressed her head into her thigh.

"Mama?" she peered up at her mother.

Mrs. Higuarshi was looking at Inuyasha and smiling. She gave a tender stroke to her daughter's temple and abandoned both her children's sides to walk over to the mutated boy.

Inuyasha's eyes flicked up to the warm face of their mother and instantly, he cowered back.

"It's alright," Mrs. Higuarshi's voice sung like a harp's melodic twines, "I'm not here to hurt you."

Kohaku tightened his grasp on Inuyasha's chain-leash.

Inuyasha strained a poor glare up at her kind eyes of swirling cinnamon. He gave her a broken growl as her fragile fingers reached out to his face.

"Mama, h-he could bite you!" Kagome blubbered.

"That's not wise, Mrs. Higuarshi," Naraku casually told her.

"I'm sure I'll be fine," the Higuarshi mother's finger was hovering right in front of Inuyasha's forehead.

He flinched back like a seared puppy when her fingernail contacted the hair of his bangs.

"Oh don't worry dear, I won't harm you," Mrs. Higuarshi's eyes closed upwards to prove her integrity.

For a fleeting second, Inuyasha became entranced by her angelic face – the face of a mother, the face of…

Mrs. Higuarshi soothingly pushed aside a plush curtain of wintry hair from his trembling eyes, "All that hair hides your handsome face away."

His talons clutched to his favorite photograph.

"That is not WISE, Mrs. Higuarshi," Naraku now sounded poisonous.

"Mo…" Inuyasha's mouth tested its lost ability, his hands shaking.

"D...Did you just say something?" Mrs. Higuarshi blinked widely.

Kagome and Sota watched in veneers of astound at the boy's startling behavior.

"M-Mo…" Salty crystal tickled at the crooks of the twelve year old boy's stinging eyes. He practically buried his mother's photograph into his chest to make it become one with his beating heart. _'M-Mother…' _

"He doesn't talk," Naraku tried not to growl after he set a trembling hand on Mrs. Higuarshi's shoulder. "He's been mute for years since he arrived here as a seven year old mutt."

"Sir Naraku," Mrs. Higuarshi stood up from the dog-eared young man, who whined in response. "I'm ready to take him now."

Naraku grunted at her collected face. He then cackled and ran a smoothening hand through his scalp, "You know Mrs. Higuarshi, I've been thinking—"

"I'll be paying as handsomely as I promised, in cash. Just name a price."

…A smirk couldn't help itself but to twiddle on the caretaker's lips.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"This is SO cool! I'm gonna get to have a pet AND an 'A'!"

"Sota, please pipe down now," Mrs. Higuarshi led her small family out of the theme park, a rusty old chain dragging across the floor in one hand. "Inuyasha isn't a pet, he's our special guest."

Little Kagome isolated herself ahead of her family. She hadn't spoken since the deal with Naraku had been contracted. Somehow, she had this feeling that her mother didn't believe her little 'cat scratch' story after all.

"He doesn't even talk!" Sota slowed his walk to tail back behind with the dog-eared 'guest' on the leash. "You don't talk, do you?"

Inuyasha's eyes stayed hooked on the swaying pattern of his clawed feet. He tried to disappear into the red blanket that veiled his ears and aching body.

"See? Not even a mumble!" Sota mocked, folding his arms behind his head. "Man, this is the best day EVER—huh?" he stopped when he couldn't hear the slithering of the clanking chain anymore.

Inuyasha, also aware, lifelessly raised his head. Sweat began to seep from his expanding pores to see the Higuarshi mother inching closer and closer into his muddy face.

He nailed his eyes shut and whimpered, expecting something unpleasant and beastly.

The only feeling that came was a sudden lightness of freedom around the nape of his neck.

"There," Mrs. Higuarshi beamed, holding up a limp shackle-collar.

Kagome spun around to comprehend the silent commotion in back of her. Fear etched itself into her flesh.

Inuyasha's timid fingers stretched around his throat for that despicable metal burden, only to realize his finger pads were only roving over soft skin and nothing more.

"Mom!"

Inuyasha winched at the pesky whine and turned baffled molten irises to the blue-eyed Kagome.

"How could you, Mom?!" Kagome tugged madly at her mother's dress. "Put that chain back on him right now!"

"Ka-GO-me," Mrs. Higuarshi descended the burthen of a rare frown on her frantic daughter. "I'm disappointed in you! How dare you act this way in front of our guest! He's not an animal bound to a chain."

"That's not what I MEANT!" Kagome jerked on the end of the dress nonetheless. "Wh-What if he attacks us--…" her voice died in her throat when sapphire conflicted with imperial topaz.

Inuyasha's unshakable grimace was stamped on her with a flicker of a pokerfaced emotion grazing across his expression. The firelight torches of the empty carnival suffused over one side of his heart-shaped face, leaving the other side ignored and shaded.

Kagome swallowed back the large heart piling up her throat and eased her fisted fingers on her mother's dress. Clusters of spiking pain washed over her arm again.

"And if we keep him caged and neglected, he'll be more prone to be wild, now won't he?" Mrs. Higuarshi patted her daughter's head. "Don't worry so much, Kagome. Inuyasha will be just fine and so will you."

Kagome stilled herself in her spot, letting her mother take the hand of the dog-eared boy to lead him past her. Her eyebrows buckled down on her forehead while Inuyasha's arcitic eyes drummed into her own as he swept by, his sterling locks of incredible length whispering along her cheek once he was gone.

"Hey ma'!" Sota jogged past Kagome and locked his fingers in his mother's other embracing palm. "Where is Inuyasha gonna sleep? In the shed or outside?"

"Guests don't sleep in the shed, dear," his mother giggled.

Kagome hugged her pulsing arm, unsure of what she was feeling – a whittling of fear or a rush of confusion? All in all, she didn't like the feeling. It made the bile surface. The impending reek of something foreign and forlorn was heavy around Inuyasha, and it made her stomach squeezy.

"He's sleeping in you and Kagome's bedroom tonight!" Mrs. Higuarshi heralded on blast.

Kagome choked on her saliva.

Inuyasha's ears began ticking out of control and his eyes grew big and wide, letting more fragments of light shudder into them. He completely forgot the price it came with - Kagome.

"HOORAY! Dog-boy sleeps in our bedroom!"

"MOOOOOM!" Kagome broke down.

A molten amber eye blinked over a forelock of sterling silver to reminiscence back on the carriage that was barely called home. The eyelid of dipping black eyelashes softened whilst bangs of sterlet swayed with the night breeze. '_Even if it's just for one night...' _


End file.
